Review: 'The Team-Up Companion'

In 1954, DC halved the page count of its World's Finest Comics and forced Superman and Batman into the same book as if they were a couple of recently divorced bozos sharing a flat. They mostly kept to their own sides of the room, but a new format was inadvertently born: the team-up. This was distinct from crossovers or guest appearances because both heroes were on equal footing in a shared title with both their logos on display. Pretty soon, team ups of everyone from Green Arrow and Martian Manhunter to Supergirl and Wonder Woman to Aqualad and Robin to Richie Rich and Casper to Spider-Man and Dracula (!) began proliferating funny books. 

Review: 'Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said!'

In 2014, the Jack Kirby estate reached a settlement with Marvel that saw the late comics artist/writer finally receive credit for his multitudinous contributions to co-creating the Marvel Universe with Stan Lee. Comics historian John Morrow was an expert witness for the Kirby family in the case. Five years later, Morrow has published his own investigation into the matter of whether Kirby or Lee can be called the true father of Marvel in the form of an oral history called Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said!

The book is a chronological he said/he said narrative that essentially picks up steam in the early sixties and continues through the settlement. Oral histories tend to be unreliable, and Stuf’ Said! certainly comes with its own baggage. Stan Lee was a shamelessly self-aggrandizing self-promoter who believed that writers are the true creators. Jack Kirby was bitter and sometimes lashed out in both interviews and satirical comics that depicted Lee as a talent leech. Despite input from many of the people closest to these two men, a definitive answer to Morrow’s central question remains elusive.

However, examining that question—which should really only be of concern to the Kirby and Lee estates despite some fans treating it like some sort of pro-wrestling rivalry— isn’t really the main draw of Stuf’ Said! The book is much more interesting as a close examination of the ups and downs of a working relationship between two very influential creative people with their own personal foibles told largely in their own words without too much editorializing by the author. Although Morrow’s role in the settlement may raise eyebrows, he does an admirable job of remaining neutral throughout the book, occasionally making an attempt to interpret the intent behind a statement while framing that interpretation as something that needs to be taken with a grain of salt (which he conveniently and cleverly signals with a little graphic of a salt shaker).

Morrow’s efforts to cover the men’s public opinions of each other is certainly thorough, though there is the unavoidable issue of imbalance since Lee was so addicted to performing interviews and writing editorials and Kirby was not. There is also a lot of repetition to wade through as the men tended to say the same things in a lot of these interviews: Lee incessantly explains how it was his idea to create superheroes with foibles, Kirby regularly insists he was behind the X-Men and the Fantastic Four because he was concerned about radiation, Lee loves to say that Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde inspired him to create the Hulk, and so on. Occasionally there are minor variations in these statements that Morrow seizes on to point out an inconsistency in the speaker’s memories, but all that repetition doesn’t always make for the most compelling reading.

Still, fans who feel they have a pony in this race will find Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! fascinating, and like all books by Morrow’s TwoMorrow’s Publishing, it is great to look at with oodles of color and B&W artwork and a witty format.

Review: 'The Comic Book History of Comics'

The history of comics told in comic format is such a simple concept that it seems deceptively obvious, yet there’s little that’s simple about that history and little that’s obvious about The Comic Book History of Comics. Perhaps the most impressive thing about this book (which collects a previously published six-issue comic series) is how much stuff writer Fred Van Lente crams into its 150 pages, tracing the history of storytelling through pictures all the way back to prehistoric cave paintings through the first political cartoons to “The Yellow Kid” to cinematic animation to the superhero era to the congressional inquiry on the effects of comics on juvenile delinquency to the pop-art sixties and finally ending with the underground comics of the seventies. Within this story is genuine drama as Max Fleischer and Walt Disney vie for the crown of animation king and Stan Lee and Steve Ditko clash.

Van Lente’s storytelling has a definite perspective, and one that may rankle comics freaks as he sneers at some of the medium’s more revered figures (Stan Lee; William Gaines) while taking an unfashionably even view of the man who may be its easiest-target villain, noting the numerous accomplishments of Fredric Wertham that have nothing to do with that guy’s dopey crusade against comic books. Most welcome is the isolated profiles of a number of women in the comics industry since women are generally shut out of this story’s primary arch for the usual patriarchal reasons.

Ryan Dunlavey’s artwork is sometimes a bit too cutesy for my tastes, but I liked his outlandish tendency to fuse creators with creations, as when he imagines Disney as a mutant man-faced Mickey Mouse, and there are some clever visual references and in jokes. The cutesiness also gets downright subversive when Dunlavey depicts beheadings, lynchings, and Adam West and Frank Gorshin yucking it up at an orgy.